The Importance of Specificity

I was in a casting session recently for a series regular role on a pilot. The role was that of an angry, rebellious mid-20s male. The scene was with his brother and mother and was three pages long. There were 42 actors seen for the role. You might imagine that there was a lot of yelling and screaming going on, and you’d be right. As a matter of fact, disconnected, generic rage was the order of the day and at the end of the session, there were only three actors who truly stood out as contenders.
When it was all over, the CD said that she was really impressed by the fact that those three had made such original and different choices. At first, I agreed, but after giving it some thought, I changed my mind. Their choices weren’t different. They had also made the choices of anger, frustration, and rage—the scene didn’t allow for much else.
The difference was that they had a way of working until they found the colors within those choices that represented their specific personalities. With most of the other actors, you got the feeling that they looked up the definition of anger in a dictionary and just “did that.” The three in contention weren’t “doing” anything. They were simply

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The Importance of Specificity

I was in a casting session recently for a series regular role on a pilot. The role was that of an angry, rebellious mid-20s male. The scene was with his brother and mother and was three pages long. There were 42 actors seen for the role. You might imagine that there was a lot of yelling and screaming going on, and you’d be right. As a matter of fact, disconnected, generic rage was the order of the day and at the end of the session, there were only three actors who truly stood out as contenders.
When it was all over, the CD said that she was really impressed by the fact that those three had made such original and different choices. At first, I agreed, but after giving it some thought, I changed my mind. Their choices weren’t different. They had also made the choices of anger, frustration, and rage—the scene didn’t allow for much else.
The difference was that they had a way of working until they found the colors within those choices that represented their specific personalities. With most of the other actors, you got the feeling that they looked up the definition of anger in a dictionary and just “did that.” The three in contention weren’t “doing” anything. They were simply